While shopping in physical “brick-and-mortar” stores is common, purchasing goods from online merchants continues to increase in popularity. Online shoppers generally find it very convenient to browse an online merchant's catalog from the ease and comfort of their own homes. Furthermore, online shoppers typically need only wait a day or two to receive the goods they purchased online. Online shoppers generally view this short wait time as minimally inconvenient in comparison with the convenience of not having to leave their homes in order to buy the things they want.
Due to the increasing popularity of online shopping, merchants are continually trying to find ways to attract customers to their own websites instead of competing websites. One way merchants try to attract customers to their websites and products is through promotional offers (e.g., coupon codes) that, if entered during checkout in the merchant's website, give the customers a deal (e.g., reduction price, free shipping, free items, etc.)
In some instances, the merchants provide the promotional offers directly to potential customers via emails and/or messages. In additional instances, third-party websites often gather promotional offers for merchants and provide the promotional offers to potential customers via their websites and/or applications. However, using the promotional offers typically requires navigating to and obtaining information from multiple web pages. Furthermore, when using mobile devices, using promotional offers often requires opening and using multiple applications concurrently to allow the user to apply the promo code at the merchant's website. Having multiple web pages and/or applications open concurrently on a mobile device and flipping back and forth between the web pages and/or applications can be cumbersome and ineffective. Furthermore, having multiple websites and/or multiple applications open concurrently requires increased processing capabilities, power (e.g., battery power), and memory from a computing device (e.g., a mobile device, laptop computer, desktop computer, etc.). This becomes of particular concern with mobiles devices, which, in some cases, have relatively limited processing capabilities, power, and memory.
Thus, there are several disadvantages to current methods for merchants providing promotional offers (e.g., coupon codes) to potential customers and those potential customers using the promotional offers.